Martin Tolman reports: Yesterday I was privileged to attend a national event organised by my trade union, Unison, and the ‘Future Social Care Coalition’, of which I am a founding signatory. FSCC is a cross-party alliance of more than 80 organisations.
Our social care sector was already broken and that has now been compounded by 11 months of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has raised awareness nationally of the work that care workers do, but in a context of increased risk to their own lives as the virus took a devastating toll on care homes and the vulnerable.
Yet many employees in care homes, together with those looking after people in the community, earn less than the real living wage of £9.50 an hour. Surely we must ensure every care worker is on the real living wage rate, as a bare minimum. Care is part of the infrastructure of this country, it is essential.
It is essential that we stand up for care workers. The general public have called them heroes. But clapping is not enough. We need to turn those claps into action.
Social care is NOT a low skilled job. It is a profession deserving of respect; decent pay and career progression. There is certainly no room for zero-hours contracts, which are all too prevalent.
For more information see